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The worst mistake I’ve made in Spanish so far… I was discussing pronoun placement with my PR friend. In English, what I was going for was “You want to buy it, but I don’t want to give it to you.”

What I ended up saying in Spanish was, “Lo quieres, pero no te quiero darlo.” (I believe that’s the phrase I used, it has been awhile since that happened) In any case, the English translation of whatever it was I said was “You want to buy it, but I don’t want to buy you.” (Apparently this was meant to mean prostitution.)

Anyway, this reminded me of the epic mistakes we make while learning a new language. It’s always worth making them so you can laugh and remember the words the way they’re supposed to be used.

I made a silly mistake in Spanish class. We were supposed to translate some words, and one word was “ano” (with the squiggle over the n). The word meant “year”, but I found “ano” without a squiggle, with means “anus”. I was very shocked the teacher gave us this word until I realized I found the wrong “ano”.

Hee hee – while teaching English in Poland, I prepared a special list of idiomatic phrases exclusively for one student who had a vey high opinion of himself. It included that well known saying: As round as a Spaniard. (As happy as a cupboard – that also got a mention.) It was fun to compile.

I can imagine. If you watch NCIS , agent David gets the idiomatic expressions misused all the time and it is funny. The saying may be “I’m so hungry I can eat a horse” but she says goat and then there is the discussion of don’t goats get hungry? No, it’s the person that is hungry and on it goes….

Hahaha! When I worked in a restaurant, I learned all the ‘bad’ words from the cooks. I never asked them how to say normal words because I feared they’d tell me a ‘bad’ word I didn’t know and I’d repeat it oblivious to the real meaning.

The important thing to know is a menu. I think it is swell to know an extra language. Down here you need Spanish, Haitian Creole and Brooklynese ( more Mets fans than Marlins at game). But on an unfortunate serious side if you are English only – you don’t get a job. Strangers in our own country.